ZFS vs OSX Time Machine

[Daniel O'Connor]

On 29/04/2011, at 10:38, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>> The OSX box is connected via an Airport Express (11n).
> 
> Can you connect something to it via Ethernet and attempt an FTP transfer
> (both PUT (store on server) and GET (retrieve from server)) from a
> client on the wired network?  Make sure whatever you're PUT'ing and
> GET'ing are using the ZFS filesystem.  Don't forget "binary" mode too.

I tried dd'ing /dev/zero over SMB and got 40MB/sec (although I'm not using AIO yet..)

FTP'ing a 300 MB file averages 60-70MB/sec (the speed of my laptop HD)

ttcp between the hosts hits wire speed (100MB/sec)

>> OK. I don't think TM can use CIFS, I will try ISCSI as someone else suggested, perhaps it will help.
> 
> Be aware there are all sorts of caveats/complexities with iSCSI on
> FreeBSD.  There are past threads on -stable and -fs talking about them
> in great detail.  I personally wouldn't go this route.
> 
> Why can't OS X use CIFS?  It has the ability to mount a SMB filesystem,
> right?  Is there some reason you can't mount that, then tell TM to write
> its backups to /mountedcifs?

It looks like I had a dodgy disk which was being tickled by the time machine backup (eg dodgy sector where the backup was located) so  I have been chasing a ghost :)

However, thanks to everyone for your helpful suggestions!

I still haven't tried iSCSI, given I can't do a bare metal restore from it it doesn't seem worth it (also I don't have the time..)

--
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
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